Effort to Establish Skateboard Park Revived

The founder of a youth activities organization is reviving a search for a place to build a skateboarding park.

Didi Carr Reuben of Citizens Assisting Pacific Palisades Youth said that at the request of many teenagers, she has renewed efforts to create a skateboard park on city property in the Palisades.

Reuben said she undertook the project about three years ago, but suspended it after neighbors near a potential site at the Palisades Recreation Center threatened to sue to stop the plan.

Along with recreation center director Mike Harrison, Reuben said she is considering either another small site within the center or a spot in Temescal Canyon south of Sunset Boulevard.

Harrison has said he believes that such a park would be a first within the city of Los Angeles.

Reuben, a 12-year Palisades resident and the mother of a teenage daughter, said she would like to present a proposal to the local Park Advisory Board by December and hopes the community will support her quest to establish a safe place for children and teenagers to skateboard. Fund-raising efforts will be led by her organization once a site is determined, she said.

"People like to think skateboarding is going to go away somehow, [but] I think it's a growing sport," Reuben said, adding that a park would be "a statement to the kids that the community is behind them and supports them."